As always, people who support the decision will say that Twitter is a private company so this isn’t censorship. But it is censorship, and it’s wrong.

It is important to allow people to say things that you don’t want to hear.

Twitter’s decision is also inconsistent. When U.S. President Trump retweeted some of Britain First’s tweets, there was a public outcry, yet Twitter defended the tweets on the grounds that people should be allowed to discuss them. Now, those tweets, plus the entire Britain First account, plus the accounts of the group’s leaders, have been removed from Twitter.

There appears to have been a hasty re-write of Twitter’s policies in order to justify the banning of the Britain First accounts. Twitter took no action against President Trump.

Inconsistency is a real problem for Twitter. Here’s one example:

Last week, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to repeal net neutrality laws. The decision was hugely unpopular, and some opponents went so far as to make threats against FCC chairman Ajit Pai.

One person, operating two Twitter accounts, posted a death threat on both accounts:

You may not make specific threats of violence or wish for the serious physical harm, death, or disease of an individual or group of people.

What is surprising, was Twitter’s handling of the death threats against Ajit Pai.

I personally reported both threats. One of the offending accounts was removed. The other wasn’t, and the owner has since posted further death threats against Ajit Pai, including a threat to personally “assassinate” him.

What this tells us about Twitter is probably very little. Both accounts were reported at around the same time, but the reports will likely have been dealt with by different people, possibly in different countries, and possibly with different understandings of Twitter’s ever-evolving terms and conditions.

But it does clearly remind us that there is a base-level inconsistency within Twitter. Someone can post death threats on two accounts, and only one account gets banned. Britain First can be banned for posting undesirable content, yet the U.S. President’s reposting of the same content is tolerated.

Whether it wants to be or not, Twitter has become a vital part of how the world communicates. And whether we like it or not, Twitter has policies on what sort of communication is allowed. Twitter must enforce those policies fairly and consistently. Censorship is one thing, but arbitrary and selective censorship is a lot uglier.

]]>https://citytog.wordpress.com/2017/12/19/twitter-bans-hate-speech-tolerates-death-threats/feed/0meejahorScreen Shot 2017-12-15 at 12.26.18Simple Procedure is far from simple, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use ithttps://citytog.wordpress.com/2017/11/26/simple-procedure-is-far-from-simple-but-that-doesnt-mean-you-shouldnt-use-it/
https://citytog.wordpress.com/2017/11/26/simple-procedure-is-far-from-simple-but-that-doesnt-mean-you-shouldnt-use-it/#respondSun, 26 Nov 2017 20:23:06 +0000http://citytog.wordpress.com/?p=902Continue reading →]]>Simple Procedure is the new name for the small claims court. Over the past four months I’ve been through the process to recover money owing from a former landlord who failed to return a rental deposit. I won my case, but it was handled so poorly by the court that it might serve as a warning to others, and could help you be prepared for the challenges you may face.

I also learned a thing or two about how the process is stacked against the person making the claim, so I’ll mention those too as they’re not obvious.

In theory, to claim money through Simple Procedure you just fill out a form, pay a modest court fee, and the debtor either pays up or chooses to fight the case in court.

This is the first bit that’s stacked against you. The debtor can simply ignore the court letter and not reply to it. If they do that then the Sheriff will automatically dismiss the case and you’ll get nothing. (See section 7.4)

To avoid that happening you have to be super-vigilant and check with the court to find out if the debtor has responded to the claim or not. The court won’t make any effort to tell you, you have to ask. If the court doesn’t hear back from the debtor then you have to write to the sheriff and request a judgement. If you don’t then the case is over, you’ve lost your money, and your court fee is gone too. You can formally ask the sheriff to re-open the case, but the debtor can formally ask him not to, so you really don’t want to let it get to that stage.

Anyway, that didn’t happen in my case. The debtor responded, saying that she didn’t owe the money, and a court date was set. Not a trial date though, no, that would be too simple. Instead the Sheriff ordered a “case management discussion“. This is supposedly an opportunity for the Sheriff to listen to both parties, consider evidence, and mediate a discussion in the hope that a compromise can be reached.

This is the next bit that’s stacked against the claimant. Consider that someone owes you money: You try to get it back, you wait, you wait more, they still don’t pay, so eventually you give in and take them to court. The court now asks you to “compromise” and accept a lower amount. In other words, the court wants the debtor to be rewarded for making you wait. And if you do accept their offer then you don’t get your court costs back.

In my case, the Sheriff simply wasn’t interested in the case. He refused to participate in the discussion. He refused to look at the evidence. He told us to go in to the corridor outside the court and reach a settlement. So out we went, but there was no chance of any compromise. The debtor unleashed a load of abuse and accusations, some weird racial comments, then offered to pay about a quarter of what she owed. I didn’t accept, and that was exactly what she wanted. Next thing I knew we were back in court and she was turning on the waterworks, telling the Sheriff how I was being unreasonable and just trying to waste her time and waste the court’s time.

Here’s another thing that’s stacked against the claimant. A key aspect of Simple Procedure is that it’s an inexpensive and relatively risk-free way to get a debt resolved, and expenses are capped – in this case at £150. However, if either person can show that the other side has behaved “unreasonably” then they can ask the Sheriff to remove the expenses cap and claim an unlimited amount. Not accepting a settlement offer is taken in to account when the Sheriff decides if someone has behaved unreasonably. As far as I’ve been able to establish, the debtor making a low offer is not taken in to account. In my case, the debtor made three low offers, the highest being only half of the debt. I rejected all three offers, so I had “three strikes” against me. It seemed pretty clear that she knew how the system worked and she was trying to play it. She told me she’d be claiming £2,000 in expenses. It was a blatant attempt to intimidate me.

Unfortunately, the Sheriff bought in to it, hook, line and sinker. I was put under a crazy amount of pressure to accept the low offer. He warned me that it could be “very expensive” for me to go to trial. He warned me again. And again, and again, and again. The whole tone of the proceeding was that he’d already decided I’d lose at trial, and had already decided to remove the expenses cap. Of course, he had no idea how aggressive the debtor had been out in the corridor. All he saw in front of him was an elderly woman pretending to cry and talking about how she needed to get home to her mother. I stood my ground and told him that I wanted to go to trial.

(By the way it’s not actually a “trial” as such, that was the Sheriff’s word. It’s an evidential hearing, much less scary sounding.)

Following the farce of the case management discussion, I was very concerned by the Sheriff’s behaviour. I wrote to the court and complained that he seemed minded to remove the expenses cap, which made it financially more dangerous to proceed with the case. At this point I was wondering if I should just cut my losses and accept the debtor’s offer. The court didn’t even show me the courtesy of a reply.

A couple of weeks later I followed up the letter, and got a shocking response: I was right. The Sheriff had already removed the expenses cap. Now, under the Simple Procedure rules, that’s not even allowed. The expenses cap can only be removed if either the claimant or the debtor requests it after the case has been decided. The cap can’t be arbitrarily removed ahead of time. But for some reason, the Sheriff had decided to do that. Why? The court wouldn’t explain.

(The Simple Procedure Rules do allow the Sheriff some leeway to deviate from normal procedure. See section 1.8. However this Sheriff seemed to be a law unto himself, making major changes to the procedure and declining to explain why he was doing it.)

The next month was nerve-wracking. I’d already done extensive research to make sure there wasn’t some obscure legal nuance that the debtor might be using to undermine my claim. I was sure there wasn’t. Her entire defence was that the case was statute barred, meaning the debt was more than five years old, but even her own paperwork showed that it wasn’t. Yet still I kept thinking, should I risk it? What if there’s something I’ve missed? What if she just outright lies in court and the Sheriff believes her? The whole debt was for less than £500 but if I lost then I fully expected the Sheriff to award thousands of pounds of expenses against me. It was a frightening prospect.

I spent every night on Google, researched similar cases, read every bit of advice I could find, found legal precedents about debt recovery and when debts become active. I was 100% sure my case was watertight. It felt like going all-in at poker – I knew I’d got the winning hand… but what if I hadn’t? By this point I was fairly sure my debtor must have a trick up her sleeve. I also had to work on the basis that she may spin a yarn. It was such a black-and-white case that really her only chance of winning was to lie. My partner and I discussed it a lot, and we both knew that I had to see it through. If I lost then I lost. We actually started putting money aside ready to give it to this awful person if she won. The money wasn’t even the main issue anymore, it was the principle.

When the day of the evidential hearing came, things seemed very different. It was a different Sheriff, and the whole tone was much fairer and more balanced.

Within a few seconds the debtor had found a way to talk about how her mother was seriously ill and she’d had to leave her and struggle through the snow to get to court. That didn’t seem to sway the Sheriff at all. Maybe he believed her, but I didn’t get any sense of it influencing him.

The hearing itself went how I thought it would, only much better. I told my side of the story, choosing to do it under oath. She told her side of the story, refusing to swear an oath. I kept my story brief and factual. Hers was a pack of lies from beginning to end. The Sheriff listened to it, took notes, and let her finish. Then he tore it apart. It was beautiful to watch.

She tried to persuade him that the debt was statute barred and it took him maybe five seconds to work out that it wasn’t. She tried to tell him that I’d breached the terms of the lease, and showed him a copy of the lease to prove it, but the Sheriff quickly established that the lease was fake. She claimed that I’d damaged the property, claimed that I’d stolen from her, claimed that photos I presented as evidence had been “airbrushed” to hide thousands of pounds worth of damage. The Sheriff didn’t entertain any of it.

When the ruling went in my favour, there was one final surprise: It turned out that the original Sheriff hadn’t removed the expenses cap at all. My debtor wanted it removed though, because she wanted to claim over £1,000 in expenses. The Sheriff told her it doesn’t work that way — the winner gets the expenses. I asked for the court costs and nothing else, and that was awarded in full.

Hopefully what you’ll take away from this is that a Simple Procedure case can be the very opposite of simple. It can be complicated and traumatic. But, the bottom line is that I won. I fought an unrepentant and dishonest debtor, and I had to fight the system a bit too, but justice was done in the end. Our debtor now has a County Court Judgement against her, which will affect her credit rating, and affect her landlord’s insurance. She has caused herself goodness knows how many financial and business problems, and ultimately ended up having to pay back more than the original debt due to court costs.

If someone owes you money, I wholeheartedly encourage you to use the courts to get it back. The system isn’t perfect, but ultimately it worked for me. Good luck

]]>https://citytog.wordpress.com/2017/11/26/simple-procedure-is-far-from-simple-but-that-doesnt-mean-you-shouldnt-use-it/feed/0meejahorIMG_3285Solving Unity’s NavMesh “Stop” Bughttps://citytog.wordpress.com/2017/09/10/solving-unitys-navmesh-stop-bug/
https://citytog.wordpress.com/2017/09/10/solving-unitys-navmesh-stop-bug/#respondSun, 10 Sep 2017 22:13:43 +0000http://citytog.wordpress.com/?p=873Continue reading →]]>(For regular readers, yes this blog is usually about my photography work, but I also program video games for fun! I’m going to be posting some stuff about my new game, and general programming stuff.)

One thing you commonly need to do when using Unity’s NavMesh pathfinding is to stop an agent, either permanently or just paused.

Unity has a function to do this: NavMeshAgent.Stop()

Unfortunately that doesn’t work. The agent just ignores it and carries on navigating the current path. It’s a bug that has existed for a few years now, so realistically we can’t wait for the Unity guys to fix it and we need to find a workaround ourselves.

Support forums suggest NavMeshAgent.ForgetPath() but that doesn’t work either.

The solution that people fall back on is to call NavMeshAgent.enabled = false but often that’s not what you want, because the agent is effectively removed from the simulation and won’t get bumped around by other agents making contact with it.

What’s the solution?

It’s simple, it’s stupid, and I’ve got no idea why it works but it does:

That’s it. You just set enabled to false and then immediately set it to true again. The agent will forget its current path, but continue to be part of the simulation.

]]>https://citytog.wordpress.com/2017/09/10/solving-unitys-navmesh-stop-bug/feed/0meejahorScreen Shot 2017-09-10 at 23.05.00How not to join the police: Stand in a field, get arrested.https://citytog.wordpress.com/2017/08/31/how-not-to-join-the-police-stand-in-a-field-get-arrested/
https://citytog.wordpress.com/2017/08/31/how-not-to-join-the-police-stand-in-a-field-get-arrested/#commentsThu, 31 Aug 2017 20:10:35 +0000http://citytog.wordpress.com/?p=850Continue reading →]]>This month I should have been embarking on an exciting new adventure, as I was applying to join the Special Constabulary to work as a volunteer part-time police officer. Instead, that’ll have to wait at least six months, and now I’m sitting here telling you this rather ironic story. It’s a long one, but I’ll try to keep it light…

It all started in December last year. I’ve already written about how the Procurator Fiscal used an underhanded tactic to seize some work photos I took of people involved in an altercation at the local Sheriff Court. But it turned out, that was just the beginning.

After seizing the photos, the police took a statement from me. Or at least they began to. When I told them truthfully that I hadn’t heard any of the exchange between the people at court, and I hadn’t seen any sign of physical threat from the person they were interested in, the police stopped the interview. Rather than take an honest statement that undermined their case, they decided to not take any statement at all. That, I was assured by the Fiscal, took my photos out of the equation – they couldn’t be used as evidence without an accompanying statement from me. But that wasn’t true. The case went ahead, using my photos as evidence. The accused was sentenced to 243 days in prison, according to the Crown Office, or 364 days, according to the Procurator Fiscal.

It was around this time that I started noticing police cars everywhere: Parked near my home, pulling up near me in car parks, driving behind me at all times of day. I wondered if they had information that someone connected to the court case was out to get me, and they were making sure I was safe. But if that was it, why were they following me around when I was driving? I have a naturally suspicious mind and I soon jumped to the fanciful conclusion that the police were trying to catch me doing something wrong. The more I tried to reject that suspicion, the more I noticed police cars in my rearview mirror, and the more I became convinced that the police didn’t have my best interests at heart.

Things escalated dramatically when I pulled up at the scene of a minor road traffic collision in April. Before I was even out of my vehicle I was approached by a police officer, who told me I’d be arrested if I tried to take photos of the scene. He was immediately confrontational and aggressive. I told him that I was there to do my job and I had to do it. He repeated that I’d be arrested. I parked up a good distance away, walked to the scene, and got on with taking photos. Within moments the sergeant in charge of the scene stopped me and told me I was committing a “criminal offence” by standing on the grass at the side of the road. The nicest word I can think of to describe his demeanour was that he was very “excitable”, and I found his behaviour worrying enough that I started a video recording on my phone in case he did arrest me. That seemed to anger him, and he physically restrained me, and ordered me to leave the scene. I stood my ground, and eventually he released me and I completed my work. He was still angry as I left, and he said he’d never allow press to photograph an accident scene again.

About a month later, at the end of May, I was covering another RTC. When I arrived at the road block and identified myself, the officer on duty radioed down to the sergeant in charge of the crash scene, who replied that he wasn’t allowing press access. That was unusual, and certainly not within the police’s authority. The newspaper had established that all casualties had already been taken away, so there was no ethical reason not to photograph the scene. Fortunately, although the road had been closed to vehicles, it hadn’t been closed to pedestrians, so I walked down to the scene.

As I approached, it appeared that a police car had been involved in the crash. That would explain why the police didn’t want press to photograph it. I took some photos from a distance, and then moved closer. I noticed that the police sergeant who had behaved so oddly a month ago was on duty at this scene. I decided it was best to avoid any interaction with him, so I went away from the road and in to a nearby field.

As soon as I stepped in to the field, the sergeant and another officer left the cordoned-off accident scene, climbed over a fence, and rushed over to me, telling me I had to leave and saying I was violating the police cordon. I pointed out that I was well away from the cordon. So the sergeant said he’d arrest me for “vandalising” the field instead. As before, he physically restrained me, and began pushing me backwards. I moved back… and back, and back, until he stopped pushing me. Finally he asked me if I was going to cross the police cordon. I said I wouldn’t. I took my phone out to call the office. With hindsight, I can only assume the sergeant thought I was going to video-record him again. He grabbed my arm and told me I was under arrest for “obstruction”.

I was hand-cuffed, put in a police car, and driven to a police station 30 miles away. I was searched, charged, given a police warning, and released, in a t-shirt in heavy rain. It was late on a Saturday afternoon in the Scottish Highlands. Getting back to my truck by public transport wasn’t going to be easy. A taxi was going to cost £50. I’d missed half a day’s work. Because I walked on some grass.

Now, for anyone outside Scotland, there’s something you need to know: You can walk through fields here. It’s not illegal. It’s specifically protected in law, in the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003. And although not relevant in this case, if there’s a crop then you can still walk in the field, you just have to stay at the edge.

There’s also the glaring issue that “obstruction” is a very specific offence, and there’s no plausible way a senior police officer could claim I had committed it. The offence of obstruction is committed when a person takes deliberate unlawful actions, believing that those actions will hinder or prevent the police from conducting their duties. Standing in the field was lawful, and any police officer should have known that. With just the working knowledge of the law that any journalist needs, I knew that my actions were lawful, so I had no reason to think I would attract police interference, or hinder or prevent the police from conducting their duties. None of the criteria for the offence of obstruction were met.

You may think the story would end there, albeit with the rather ugly ending of me having a police warning on my record. But it gets worse. Supported by the National Union of Journalists, I went through the process of challenging the warning. We were then told that there was no warning to challenge. Behind the scenes, the police had cancelled the warning and referred me to the Procurator Fiscal for prosecution.

Did you know they could do that? I didn’t. Here’s what is written on the warning:

This is an alternative to prosecution. Police Scotland considers that there is sufficient evidence to justify a report to the Procurator Fiscal for consideration of a prosecution and on this occasion Police Scotland have exercised discretion not to report the matter.

But it turns out, having given you the warning, they’re free to cancel it and report you anyway. This is something the police can just do if they feel like it. It doesn’t seem to be considered a breach of procedure, or even out of the ordinary. They can literally give you an official document saying you won’t be prosecuted, and then try to get you prosecuted anyway.

And that brings us up to date. Three months have now passed, and I hadn’t heard anything from the Procurator Fiscal. I contacted them yesterday, and received this reply today:

This case and what, if any action, may be appropriate are both matters which are presently under consideration.

The knock-on effect of all this is that I can’t be on the next intake of recruits for the Special Constabulary, and I’ll have to wait til next year. I hoped the recruitment team may be able to exercise some discretion, but they told me today:

You should wait until the case has been resolved before applying. The case will be showing as pending on your file and we wouldn’t be able to consider your application without knowing the outcome of the trial at court.

Once the case has been to trial, even if I’m convicted, I may still be able to join the Specials. But due to a technicality I can’t join while the case is pending, and the Fiscal seems happy to keep me hanging on.

I’ll let you know what happens, if it ever happens.

]]>https://citytog.wordpress.com/2017/08/31/how-not-to-join-the-police-stand-in-a-field-get-arrested/feed/8meejahorIMG_1602Sometimes you need a TV licence to use Twitterhttps://citytog.wordpress.com/2017/07/11/sometimes-you-need-a-tv-licence-to-use-twitter/
https://citytog.wordpress.com/2017/07/11/sometimes-you-need-a-tv-licence-to-use-twitter/#respondTue, 11 Jul 2017 23:37:46 +0000http://citytog.wordpress.com/?p=836Continue reading →]]>For a couple of weeks in July, and at several other times of the year, people in Britain will be breaking the law if they use Twitter without a TV licence.

Our TV licence rules are quite strict – you can’t watch any live TV without a licence. The law applies to broadcasts from anywhere in the world – for example, if you’re in the UK and you don’t have a TV licence then you can’t watch CNN on their web site. It’s a criminal offence. You also can’t watch anything at all on the BBC iPlayer, even catch-up shows.

I don’t have a TV licence. We don’t watch live TV in our household, and it wasn’t worth £147 per year for the few BBC shows that we used to watch on iPlayer.

But I do use the internet, where more and more video content is streamed live. This got me thinking: Where is the line drawn? Am I breaking the law if I watch one of Apple’s live product launches? What about someone streaming a video game on Twitch?

I put those scenarios to the TV Licensing authority, and thankfully the law does take a sensible approach to modern technology. A spokesperson explained:

You do not need to be covered by a TV licence to watch live streamed content which is not provided as part of a television programme service. Examples of this may include a company live streaming their own product launch or gaming event online.

But arguably, the law hasn’t quite kept up with some aspects of the internet. For example, as I write this, I’ve got my Twitter feed open in a browser window, and at one side of the page is a live stream of a Wimbledon match.

Does the unrequested presence of that Wimbledon stream mean that I’m committing an offence?

Surprisingly, yes. According to TV Licensing:

You need to be covered by a TV licence to watch or record live TV programmes on any channel or online TV service. This is the case no matter where in the world the service is located, or the platform you’re using (for example, Facebook or Twitter).

I asked if I’m meant to stay off Twitter during sports events such as Wimbledon, or find a way to block the streams from appearing. TV Licensing wouldn’t discuss specifics. The spokesperson would only say:

It’s a bit of a grey area, but if there’s a live TV stream as part of the web page then you need a TV licence if you want to visit that web page.

I’ll admit that I felt this was overly strict, as nobody on Twitter has any control over what appears in the sidebar. It seems unreasonable to me that a US company (ESPN) can sell their own content to another US company (Twitter), but if Twitter chooses to show me that unsolicited content then I’m committing a criminal offence.

Out of interest, I put another scenario to the TV Licensing authority. Suppose there’s a terrorist attack, or a major incident such as the Grenfell Tower fire, and someone fears a relative is caught up in it. Would TV Licensing prosecute them for watching live TV news without a licence?

The answer was a bit yes and a bit no:

If a user streams live TV programmes, they need to be covered by a TV licence. You need a licence to watch live TV on any platform, and you also need a licence to watch live news. When we visit unlicensed properties, a statement is taken from any responsible adult at the property. We only prosecute when it is in the public interest to do so. It’s a tiny number of people who could ever possibly be ‘caught out’ by the scenarios you’ve outlined.

Presumably what we’re meant to take from this is that it wouldn’t be in the public interest to prosecute a concerned relative who watched TV coverage of a major incident. But who decides if their concerns are legitimate? And is it really in the public interest to prosecute someone for using Twitter during Wimbledon fortnight? Who decides?

]]>https://citytog.wordpress.com/2017/07/11/sometimes-you-need-a-tv-licence-to-use-twitter/feed/0meejahorHow the UK police can coerce journalists into surrendering photographshttps://citytog.wordpress.com/2017/03/06/how-the-uk-police-can-coerce-journalists-into-surrendering-photographs/
https://citytog.wordpress.com/2017/03/06/how-the-uk-police-can-coerce-journalists-into-surrendering-photographs/#commentsMon, 06 Mar 2017 19:06:18 +0000http://citytog.wordpress.com/?p=699Continue reading →]]>Press photographers are fairly clued-up nowadays on how the law protects our right to do our job. One of those protections is that the police can’t seize our equipment or photos. But what happens when the police really want to seize them? It turns out that they have a nasty trick up their sleeve.

On an unusually warm morning last December I’d just finished covering a trial at the local sheriff court when there was an altercation between people involved in the trial. I photographed the incident. Minutes later my phone rang. It was a police officer, asking me to surrender the photos to the police to use as evidence against one of those involved.

Doing so would have set a dangerous precedent and would compromise the impartiality of myself and the other press photographers who work at the court. It’s quite foreseeable that one photographer handing over photos would endanger all other photographers at the court as we may be perceived as informers or allies of the police.

I took advice from the National Union of Journalists, who advised that there is a standard procedure in such cases: The police issue what is known as a production order, then the photographer either co-operates or the union contests the order. We told the police that the photos wouldn’t be handed over voluntarily. The only copy of the photos was placed in a secure off-site location.

It was at this point that events took an unexpected turn. The police chose not to issue a production order. Instead, the Procurator Fiscal (the Scottish equivalent of the Crown Prosecution Service in England, or the District Attorney in the United States) applied for a warrant to raid my home and seize “if necessary by force” all of my electronic equipment.

The scope of the warrant was unlimited. They could take everything: Computers, cameras, memory cards, phones, tablets, television, games console, etc.

One thing the Fiscal didn’t request was for me to hand over the photos.

The application for the warrant quickly made its way through the court. The NUJ brought in various solicitors and advisers from around the UK. We were working on the assumption that the court would grant the Fiscal’s warrant but it was something that we had to resist on principle.

I securely erased my computers and memory cards. I couldn’t risk the police being able to identify sources from other stories, or finding passwords to access my email and instant messaging accounts which could compromise other people’s sources.

On 28 December I attended the final hearing at the sheriff court. The NUJ representative, who had travelled for three hours, was denied entry. I wasn’t allowed entry by default and had to get special permission, although only to observe. The sheriff listened intently to the Fiscal’s case, nodding along. When my solicitor began talking the sheriff was visibly uninterested.

The sheriff put questions about journalism ethics to my solicitor, whose response to each question was that he didn’t have an answer. I wasn’t allowed to answer.

More specific questions were asked, such as would I have surrendered the photos if they showed other crimes such as shoplifting or a murder. My solicitor couldn’t answer the questions. I wasn’t allowed to.

Finally my solicitor raised the issue that the warrant was extraordinarily far-reaching and wouldn’t achieve the goal of obtaining the photos as I didn’t have them. He pointed out that seizing my cameras served no purpose and would prevent me from working, which the Fiscal accepted. My solicitor asked for the cameras to be excluded from the warrant.

After some brief consideration, the sheriff granted the warrant in full. My solicitor asked if that included seizing my cameras. The sheriff replied “yes” and that was the end of it.

Things then had to move quickly. We expected the police to execute the warrant immediately, before we could lodge an appeal. I’d already arranged for another press photographer to come to my home to photograph the raid. I felt it was important to document a scene of British police raiding a British journalist’s home to seize cameras and computers etc.

But that isn’t what happened. The Fiscal had a different plan. He advised the NUJ that if I handed over the photos within 24 hours then the warrant wouldn’t be executed.

That’s what it had all been about. I don’t believe the Fiscal had ever wanted to seize my cameras or computer, he just wanted the threat of it to use as a bartering tool: The police couldn’t legally force me to hand over the photos but if I didn’t do so then they would execute the warrant and put me out of business.

Again I took advice from the NUJ and they advised me to hand over the photos. We could appeal the warrant, but the police could simply execute it before the appeal was heard. I’d lose all of my equipment for possibly a year or more, and a 15-year career would be over.

Being pragmatic about it, I have a family to provide for. I had to choose very quickly between failing my family or failing my ethics. I took the NUJ’s advice. They returned the photos to me, and I allowed the police to seize them. I regret my decision. Everyone on this side of the case has reassured me that it was the right thing to do, but it wasn’t.

As for the warrant, it remains active, with no time limit. I now conduct my work knowing that the police could raid my home at any time, without warning, and take everything.

Two weeks ago a senior police officer at a road accident ordered me to stop recording audio and delete any video that I’d already shot. I didn’t delete the video so the officer took my press ID card, recorded my details, and told me that my camera would be seized.

UPDATE: 13 March 2017. The NUJ’s understanding is that the warrant is no longer active, since the photos were seized by the police.

]]>https://citytog.wordpress.com/2017/03/06/how-the-uk-police-can-coerce-journalists-into-surrendering-photographs/feed/30meejahorApple’s missing headphone socket is a warning of deadly arrogancehttps://citytog.wordpress.com/2016/09/09/apples-missing-headphone-socket-is-a-warning-of-deadly-arrogance/
https://citytog.wordpress.com/2016/09/09/apples-missing-headphone-socket-is-a-warning-of-deadly-arrogance/#respondFri, 09 Sep 2016 13:07:10 +0000http://citytog.wordpress.com/?p=674Continue reading →]]>We’ve seen over the past couple of days that a lot of people are angry about Apple removing the headphone socket from the next iPhone. Personally it doesn’t affect me. My iPhone 6 Plus will be my last iPhone, so anything missing from the new one is irrelevant to me. But Apple’s decision to drop the headphone socket is something that should concern — and indeed frighten — everyone.

For a few years now, many people in the tech community have taken it as a given that Apple are developing a self-driving car. It would be laughable to think that they aren’t. And one thing that we can confidently predict is that it will be a spectacular commercial success. In a few years, right at the point when other car manufacturers have conditioned consumers and governments to fully accept autonomous vehicles, Apple will pull back the curtain and reveal the iCar, or whatever they decide to call it. Backed by Apple’s marketing savvy, and a gazillion over-reaching promises of how much better it is than every competitor’s offering, there is simply no conceivable way that it can fail. You can be one hundred percent sure that within the next decade, whether you’re a driver, or a passenger in a vehicle, or just walking along the pavement, somewhere nearby there will be a two-tonne metal box, travelling at lethal speed, controlled by an Apple operating system.

The idea of an Apple-developed self-driving car is terrifying. Because as much as Apple is known for making nice products, they’re also known for making flaky products and then not just failing to fix them, but wilfully choosing to leave them broken.

I currently use an iMac, a MacBook, an iPad and an iPhone. I’m far from an Apple fanboy, but I’ve certainly been a fan of their products. The trouble is, a big part of why people like me choose to use Apple products is because they work well together — and nowadays they simply don’t.

For example, a couple of times each day I get a notification on my iPhone saying that I need to authorise it to use iCloud, Apple’s cross-platform syncing service. So I do. Apple send me a code by text message, and I use that code to go through the authorisation process. Right up to the very end, at which point it fails. It has been like this for years. Apple’s message boards are full of cries for help from people who can’t authorise their devices. Apple’s response? They have no idea what the problem is.

People who use Apple computers to develop software mostly use an Apple product called Xcode. It’s a fantastic piece of software. Right up until each new version comes out, that is. Because when you go through Apple’s update process, not only does Xcode fail to update, but it stops all of your other software from updating. The only solution is to delete Xcode from your system, then download it and install it fresh. Apple’s response? Silence. Another problem that has been going on for years, unsolved and unexplained.

All of my Apple devices should be able to share files using a service called AirDrop. Doesn’t work. Sometimes I can send a file from my iPhone to my iMac. Sometimes I can’t. MacBook to iMac? Forget it. And don’t even bother trying with the iPad. Apple’s solution? Well for a few years now they’ve been quite happy to just ignore the problem, so I don’t see them fixing it any time soon. They do still like to advertise what a good feature it is, though, regardless of how unreliable it is.

But of course all of these problems are dwarfed by the Lightning cable and socket. This is how you charge current iPhones and iPads. It’s how you get data off them, do backups, sync iTunes, etc. And they’re awful. The cables are so prone to breaking that Apple only guarantees them for three months. The sockets on the phones fail for various reasons — they get dirty, they slacken off, and the connection to the phone’s main board becomes loose. As a consumer, I don’t care why it happens, I just care that it does. I have to charge my iPhone two or three times every day, and I can’t use it while it’s charging because moving the phone even slightly can cause the charging to stop. Worse, the cables/plugs are a well-documented fire risk, so it would be foolish to leave the phone unattended while it’s charging, or to charge it overnight.

If you live in the real world, where people have to take responsibility for their actions and are driven by some crazy desire to just do the right thing, you might think that Apple would have owned-up to making a “duff” product. Lightning cables were a nice idea, but they’re badly designed to the point of being annoying and dangerous.

But in not owning-up, Apple helpfully revealed a lot about the disdain they have for their customers. Did Apple re-think the design of the faulty Lightning cable? No, they reduced the length of guarantee, knowing that customers would then have to buy replacements. Did they fix the problems with the Lightning sockets? One would like to think that they might have tried, but there’s certainly no evidence of it.

And now, Apple customers have received the greatest slap in the face of all. Rather than Apple admitting that Lightning cables/sockets are flawed, and perhaps moving to a standardised and reliable USB port, the company is sticking with Lightning and now also using it as the headphone socket. Apple claims that this is an act of “courage”. The pretence is that it will allow them to make nicer phones. Nonsense. They’ve done it so they can extract a licence fee from headphone manufacturers who want to make compatible ‘phones. And they’ve done it to sell their own $159 wireless earbuds.

In itself, dropping the headphone socket from the new iPhone isn’t a big deal. Apple can do whatever they want with their own products — nobody has to buy them.

But sticking with the Lightning connector most certainly is a big deal. As consumers, we now have 100% cast-iron evidence that shows how Apple deals with faulty products. They stick with them. They don’t back off. They don’t admit the fault and fix it.

Apple is a company that doesn’t admit to faults, and doesn’t fix them. In a few years, Apple will want you to gamble your life, and the lives of people around you, on trusting its autonomous car. That’s a very high stakes gamble.

]]>https://citytog.wordpress.com/2016/09/09/apples-missing-headphone-socket-is-a-warning-of-deadly-arrogance/feed/0meejahorimg_9252untitled-1Why has Shpock gone kinky on me?https://citytog.wordpress.com/2016/05/25/why-has-shpock-gone-kinky-on-me/
https://citytog.wordpress.com/2016/05/25/why-has-shpock-gone-kinky-on-me/#respondWed, 25 May 2016 19:23:42 +0000http://citytog.wordpress.com/?p=614Continue reading →]]>I’ve never bought anything from Shpock, the “boot sale app” that will go down in history as having the most annoying name of the social media era. But still I get bombarded with recommendations for local products that I may be interested in. Such as these…

But that’s not all. Look at the item on the left, the shoes for sale. Is that… rope? Yeah it’s another offer from the same guy, a package deal with the shoes and some “tightly bound black rope“. And that’s his hairy legs modelling them both.

I’ve had a look at Shpock a couple of times over the past year, and it’s clear that escorts are using it to advertise their services, something that doesn’t violate the platform’s terms and conditions. I suppose that’s okay. You have to be 18 or over to use the site, so consenting adults ‘n’ all that. You can skip over the adverts you don’t want to see. But when it comes to Shpock sending me kinky offers by email, I’m not sure that’s okay…

Over the past few years we’ve had some astonishingly bad service from British Telecom. If you’ve ever been a BT customer then you’ll know the score: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, and you’ll never get to the end of the ever-expanding list of complaints hoops that you have to jump through.

BT’s customer service policy is quite transparent: Exhaust the customer so they give up.

It’s effective. We’re owed thousands of pounds for downtime and loss of business, but we’ve given up trying to get the money. It’s never going to happen. We’re owed £375 in erroneous charges for engineer visits. We’ll never get that money back. One time BT just randomly charged us £70 for a router. We’ll never see that money again.

But there’s something different about the latest thing that’s gone wrong…

While moving house this month, we’ve discovered that our last move in December 2013 was processed incorrectly. We were signed-up to a 5-year contract for a service called “Featureline” that we never ordered, never wanted, and had never even heard of.

BT’s response to this has been what you might expect: Tough. There’s no record of us ordering this service, either in writing or over the phone, but they insist there’s nothing they can do about it.

Worse, if we move within the 5-year term of the contract (as we have this time) then the contract ‘resets’ and a new 5-year period begins. They’ll only release us from the contract if we pay them £800.

Someone, somewhere, somehow, must do something about BT. This company has got too big, to the point that it can operate like some shady back-street dealer and get away with it. So I’m going to fight them.

Like anyone else who has had to deal with BT’s customer service people, I’m way past the point of being beaten down and exhausted, but I’m going to do this for the greater good.

I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll write to as many complaints departments as I have to. If they come back and say that I have to write to someone else, or do something else, or jump through another hoop, then I’ll do it. And I’ll record it all here.

The point is to create a record of a random BT customer’s experience when something goes wrong. I’ll update this blog post at each step of the process. Hopefully, as it drags on and on and nothing gets done, it will build in to a compelling piece of evidence that other customers, and perhaps Ofcom, can use against BT. One day this monstrosity of a company might be forced to change its attitude towards customers. Someone has to take the first step, and it had might as well be me.

Updates:

18 May 2016

This “dispute” almost ended before it began! When our new phone line went live, it was a normal phone line with none of this silly “Featureline” nonsense. I emailed our service manager Debra to thank her for resolving the problem. Alas, we were wrong. This was her response. (Several emails condensed in to one quote.)

The feature line data is still being built unfortunately I have not been able to cancel this. When the order closes the feature line facilities will activate. The featureline can be removed and the line downgraded to standard line but you will incur charges for cancellation of the long term 5 year contact. Unfortunately I am unable escalate the dispute regarding the 5 year contract term any further. A new contract for a 5 year feature line will start from the day the line is installed. To downgrade to a standard line will incur charges which I will not be able to remove.

I’ve also spoken to Debra on the phone and the reason why she can’t (won’t?) escalate the dispute is because it has been 2.5 years since the Featureline order was processed. I’m not sure why that’s relevant? Obviously we weren’t sent a bill or an invoice or an order confirmation or anything, because we never ordered anything! So because we didn’t know about BT’s mistake until they told us about it 2.5 years later, we now have to pay for it.

By the way our broadband couldn’t be moved at the same time as our phone line, for some reason. BT gave us this useful link to check our order progress:

19 May 2016

Well if I was dealing with any normal company then today should have been the end of this dispute, as we’ve figured out what went wrong. But with BT? No.

Here’s an excerpt from a “live chat” with an agent this morning:

Matthew: on the account we have contact names Mr Adrian Tyler, Mr Oli Smith, Ms Penny HalsaallAndrew Smith: None of those are me Matthew: i know we have you aswellAndrew Smith: None of those names should be connected to our account.Matthew: so it could be any of these people that could of placed the orderAndrew Smith: I don’t know who any of those people are, or why they’ve been connected to our account.Andrew Smith: This is why I need to see a copy of the order, to see who placed the order.Matthew: give me 1 moment im seeing what I can do for youAndrew Smith: Thanks Matthew.Matthew: its coming up as if it was in 25th april 2013 and it was saved under your name

This has been a recurring problem with BT — they have multiple businesses connected to our account. There’s a tree surgeon, a restaurant, a “man with a van” service, plus another one that I’ve forgotten. So maybe one of those businesses ordered the Featureline and it was added to my account by mistake?

It turns out that’s exactly what happened. According to an agent who I spoke to on the phone, someone from “The Mermaid” (a restaurant?) ordered the Featureline on 25 April 2013, and for some reason it was added to our account on 14 January 2014.

Problem solved? Yeah right. According to the agent I spoke to, he went and listened to a recording of a phone call from 13 December 2013 and someone who “had the same accent” as me could be heard ordering the Featureline. He couldn’t explain why an order placed in December 2013 would have been dated April 2013, or why it would be added to my account in January 2014, or why orders from “The Mermaid” are being added to my account.

I asked to hear the recording, but the only way BT will allow me to listen to it is if I pay for a copy of all correspondence, phone calls, emails, account info, notes, etc, related to my account. The agent was just about to give me the address that I had to apply to, when the line when dead. Imagine that! What amazing timing.

20 May 2016

Another day, another problem. That picture over on the right is our broadband router, a full week after our line move was completed. Yep, that’s right, no broadband!

I’d made a point of waiting the full week that our account manager said it might take, but today I rang BT to ask why the broadband wasn’t working. Turns out it’s still on our old line. Our account manager had forgotten to process the move request, and then went on holiday until next week.

But this is actually a good thing. See, the person that I spoke to today told me something that I didn’t know — if the broadband had been moved, even though we were about six months out of our 2-year contract, BT would have reset the contract and we’d be locked in to paying around £30 per month for another two years. That would mean that the only way to upgrade to fibre would be to pay for a £40/month package, whereas someone out of contract can get it for £18/month and get free calls thrown in.

So I cancelled our broadband. The lady who cancelled it for us also put a note on our account to make sure our account manager doesn’t re-order it, and there’s a callback request for her to contact me when she gets back from holiday. We got the full name of the lady who cancelled the order, and which call centre she’s based in.

Considering how efficient BT are at screwing up, here’s a wild guess: As soon as our account manager comes back from holiday, on Monday apparently, she’ll re-open the order and we’ll be locked in for another two years. Let’s see if I’m right, shall we?

23 May 2016

I can’t believe I’m about to write this, but I finally got through to someone at BT with some common sense who seems to have got the entire problem sorted out in one phone call. Allow me to run you through the day’s events…

Debra our account manager phoned. Long phone call. She told me that BT only keep call recordings for six months, so there was no way the guy I spoke to last Thursday could have found a recording from December 2013. As such, BT have no evidence of the Featureline being ordered. They have no idea why it was ever added to my account.

So, problem solved? Debra can cancel the Featureline?

No! Of course not. Debra now claims that because we’ve moved house during the 5-year term of the Featureline contract, that counts as acceptance of the contract. So even if I didn’t order it before, I’ve ordered it now. I don’t know how one human being can say this sort of thing to another human being and not feel deeply uncomfortable within themselves. Debra must be a very loyal BT employee.

Next, just out of interest, and perhaps a bit of devilment, I thought I’d give the Customer Options team another call to find out why one of their agents had lied about listening to a phone call from December 2013. This took about an hour, thanks to calls being transferred to the wrong department, line drops, etc. But eventually I got through to someone and started to explain the problem. And the most amazing thing happened…

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to Nathan Wynn. Nathan is someone very special at BT. Nathan listened to me explaining the problem. He listened to me explaining about all the many other problems we’ve had with BT due to the other businesses around the country being wrongly associated with our account. Nathan listened to everything, and then he went off to see what he could do.

It took Nathan maybe five minutes to establish that there was no record of us ever ordering the Featureline. Not only could he cancel it on the spot, effective immediately, but he could also cancel our 5-year contract without charge.

After a bit more discussion, what we decided would be the best thing to do would be to entirely cancel our phone line. The line will be disconnected. The account will close. And then we can start up a brand new line with a new account, without any of those other businesses being connected to us.

Could this really be the end of our problems with BT? Did we find the one man in the entire company that can actually get stuff done? I won’t lie — I’m slightly sceptical. But we’ve already had confirmation by email that the contract has been cancelled and the phone line will cease. So maybe, just maybe, this is actually happening.

BT is the most awful company I’ve ever had to deal with. They operate a labyrinthine network of call centres and complaints departments that seem to serve no purpose other than to rip-off their customers. They employ people that will lie. They employ people that will make up the most absurd justifications for abhorrent mistreatment of customers. But somewhere, deep within the bowels of the leviathan, there is one man who actually cares, and actually gets stuff done.

Thank you Nathan!

]]>https://citytog.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/one-random-customers-fight-against-british-telecom/feed/0meejahorScreen Shot 2016-05-18 at 19.16.14IMG_8017Rip-off retailers SELLING free Star Wars expansionhttps://citytog.wordpress.com/2015/11/26/rip-off-retailers-selling-free-star-wars-expansion/
https://citytog.wordpress.com/2015/11/26/rip-off-retailers-selling-free-star-wars-expansion/#respondThu, 26 Nov 2015 17:39:04 +0000http://citytog.wordpress.com/?p=349Continue reading →]]>If you’re playing Star Wars Battlefront, and loving it as much as I am, then no doubt you’re looking forward to the free Battle of Jakku expansion that’s coming out on 8 December. And if, like me, you pre-ordered the base game, then you should be getting the expansion a week early.

Be warned, though, that some retailers have different ideas, and have been holding back the early access codes that should have been sent out with pre-orders. And worse, they’re now selling those codes.

The guilty parties are, perhaps unsurprisingly, the “discount” web sites that sell cheap CD keys. A quick Google search shows that CDKeys, GamesRocket, GamesDeal and MMOGA are all selling the free expansion, with prices ranging from 99p to £3.95.

It was CDKeys that I pre-ordered the base game from. When I asked why I hadn’t received the Jakku early access code, they told me:

We are selling Battle of Jakku DLC as a separate item. It isn’t free until the 8th of December.

The information on their web site is also misleading:

Players who order Battle of Jakku DLC can fight the battle one week early; all other players will get access to this content on Tuesday, 8 December 2015.

Remember: The expansion is free for everyone. These early access codes that they’re selling were meant to be given out to people who pre-ordered the base game. This is what Electronic Arts say on their web site:

Will all retailers be offering the Battle of Jakku pre-order offer?

Yes, the offer will be available at all retailers accepting pre-orders for Star Wars Battlefront.

And in response to customers’ concerns on Facebook:

The Battle of Jakku is free for everyone that purchases Star Wars Battlefront, but fans that pre-order will get this content one week early.

So there’s no grey area here. The expansion is free.

I’ve put a call in to EA’s press office, and if they ever get back to me then I’ll edit this post to let you know what they say. But in the meantime, just keep in mind that any retailers selling early access codes for Jakku are selling codes that should have gone out for free to other customers.